Year of Magical Thinking: Syntax and Synthesis
Syntax:
Joan Didion uses many syntax devices to emphasize the important emotions or tones she is trying to create. One device that she uses throughout the book is parenthetical aside. On page 5 and several other places she writes “And then—gone” (Didion 5). One of the struggles Didion faces is the fact that her husband is actually gone and how it was so unexpected. The parenthesis aside created the dramatic effect showing how everything was as expected, and before she realized, he was gone. The hyphen makes the “gone” the main focus of the simple sentence. In Didion’s style, she constantly shifts her story, focus, tone and syntax portraying to the audience how her mind cannot stay in one place and how none of the evidence or stories she reads satisfies her. An example of shift in syntax she uses is on page 12 “ “V-fibbing,” John’s cardiologist said the next morning when he called from Nantucket. “They would have said ‘V-fibbing.’ V for ventricular.”… Ventricular did. Maybe ventricular was the given. I remember trying to straighten out in my mind what would happen…show more content… One synthesis she uses on page 37 is “I recall being struck by an interview, during the 2004 campaign, in which Teresa Heinz Kerry talked about the sudden death of her first husband … she had felt very strongly that she “needed” to leave Washington and go back to Pittsburgh” (Didion 37-38). This synthesis was important because one grieving struggles she had been having was that she still believed he would come back. In this example the women explained that she needed to go back to Pittsburg because that’s where her husband would be. Didion is going through the same thing, she is having trouble getting rid of his belongings, such as his shoes because in her mind she thinks he needs them when he